Warren to offer vacant parcels for $1

A dollar may not buy much these days, but in Warren it will be enough to purchase a residential lot.

So what’s in the fine print?

Only homeowners who live next to vacant, city-owned parcels can qualify.

Warren officials want to accelerate efforts to get rid of tax-reverted parcels by giving neighboring property owners a chance to widen their yards — permanently.

The city owns approximately 70 residential empty lots that cost upward of $22,000 a year total to maintain by mowing the grass and weeds.

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“Empty lots just produce crime and garbage,” said City Councilwoman Kelly Colegio, who wants officials to step up efforts to sell the parcels to eliminate blight. Colegio said she worked with a church group last summer that tried to clean up the southern part of the city. She noticed some parcels were being mowed, and learned those were owned by the municipality.

The council voted to have the city administration mail letters to the owners of adjacent lots, offering the properties that planners and the Tax Increment Finance Authority won’t re-develop on their own, for $1.

“If both homeowners want it, just split the lot between both of them,” Colegio said.

Some of the undeveloped lots are considered too small for new home construction under current ordinance that requires lots at least 60 feet wide for single-family construction. Many of the city-owned parcels are believed to be about 40 feet wide, and would allow adjacent residential property owners to widen their parcels to a total of 60 feet or more.

Officials said Warren would save money maintaining and checking city-owned lots by selling them, while giving next-door neighbors more room.

Last year, the city sold a parcel to Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, on Packard Avenue near Eight Mile and Van Dyke, on the condition the land be used as a community garden.

About four years ago, Warren ordered the demolition of approximately 100 dilapidated houses a year, and offered the land to adjacent property owners.

Planning Director Ron Wuerth said his department is compiling a database of parcels owned by the city because of unpaid property taxes, along with the names and addresses of adjacent residential property owners, to find interested buyers.

“We want to move ’em on, let’s put it that way,” Wuerth said. “I think it’s an opportunity for homeowners to expand their property and I don’t think, tax-wise, it’s that much (of an impact), frankly.”

Offering the empty lots for a buck is the easy part, he said. The legal requirements, such as defining new lot lines and document preparation, can be time-consuming.

Over the years, some residents were unwilling to buy whole or half-parcels, fearing their property assessments and tax bills would rise.

Council President Cecil St. Pierre believes tax incentives, in the form of residential property tax abatements, may pique buyer interest. He said Warren should offer a tax break that would not allow the additional land to drive up assessments.

“Let’s make (acquiring parcels) a turn-on, rather than a turn-off,” he said.

Establishing residential property tax abatements would require the drafting and passage of an ordinance.

Meantime, officials are concerned about several tax-reverted parcels that were purchased at the Macomb County property auction. The council recently formed a three-member real estate committee that’s expected to address blight and other issues involving empty parcels and vacant homes.

“This is something that has come to us that we never envisioned. In fact, there were times people were fighting over these lots to build (houses) on them,” said the council president, referring to the housing boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. “Now 10, 15 years later, see how quick things change?”

Warren has an estimated 5,000 vacant homes, caused in large part by the collapse of the housing market and the Great Recession.

“That’s a scary number,” Colegio said.

The council recently voted to direct the Water Division to shut off the water supply to vacant houses, some of which are occupied by squatters or drug dealers that have left homeowners worried about their safety, she said.